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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.
This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.
There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.
This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.
Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.
Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!
I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.
Trump brought this on himself.
There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty. Masked and armed bouncers dragging people away at gunpoint has horrible optics. There are documented cases of people being deported to random nations, a few people have been disappeared (from public tracking, limiting a family's visibility into where a loved one is) and there's a general allergy to due process. Horrible optics.
"Cruelty is the point". I didn't believe it during Trump 1. For Trump 2, I believe it.
Here are the 'job requirements' for a deportation officer.
Literally randos.(I retract my statement, I was wrong here)There is reason that police & military training take time. Using a gun for law enforcement is a heavy responsibility. ICE is picking untrained civilians, giving them guns and asking them to go be bounty hunters.Democrats are justified in believing that this will select for bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else. Given that most illegal immigrants are brown, I can see why democrats would believe that the average ICE agent is a raging racist too.
If Democrats believe what they claim to believe, then their actions are in line with those values. ICE agents look like an angry paramilitary that a dictator would deploy against his populace. People believe what they see. Democrats are cherry picking, but the cherry picked images are still real images.
It may be treason. It may not. An accusation must be validated by a supposedly neutral arbiter. In your characterization, when the state oversteps its powers to oppose the federal govt, it is treason.
Now, both parties have operated in a maximally oppositional manner since Obama was elected. The adversarial nature has only gotten further amplified with every subsequent President. Given the way laws are written, both parties fight it out in the massive grey area between words. States vs Federal tussles are the most common form of inter-party warfare. This is business as usual. The system leaves it to Courts to decide what the bounds of this grey area are.
As with all accusations in the US, until the supreme courts weighs in, it isn't formally treason. Given that no one have been convicted of Treason since WW2, I think you're being hyperbolic.
I'm confused. Trump is consistently the first one to raise the temperature and to lower the bar for acceptable discourse. I don't want to sound like a kid. But, he started it. Only now, the democrats are responding.
Trump is the President and central figure to America's current polarization. If there is a civil war, it will be because of him. As the one in power, the onus is on Trump to reduce the temperature.
I dont think there is much evidence supporting this assertion. Arresting people is always going to generate the possibility of "bad optics" if the media wants to portray it as bad. Illegal immigrants are concentrated in cities that are run by Democrats. With not just passive resistance by Democratic governments, but often active participation in the thwarting of law enforcement actions, things would always have progressed to this point unless Trump just went along with the program and continued to not enforce immigration law. You had that judge in Wisconsin smuggling away an illegal in court, but court is the most orderly place to arrest ANYONE! They already went through a voluntary weapons screening and/or are already in custody and have been searched. So, no. He isn't going to the max, he's barely doing the minimum proscribed by law.
Yes there is???!
This is happening, and the optics do suck. You can tell they suck because people hate and fear ICE officers in a way they didn't a year ago.
This happened, and the optics are so bad
This has been happening.
Why are you in dental
Step me through this, please. Evidence of this being true would require a reasonably deep look at the anti-ICE narrative, the pro-ICE narrative, and some analysis of not only why the anti-ICE narrative is closer to the truth than the pro-ICE one, but an ironclad case for why ICE is being unnecessarily cruel.
I say some reasonably unoctroversial things like "gender affirming doctors are prescribing chemical castration drugs to children" and I'm expected to provide evidence with citations, but you make your case with "yes there is???!?" and repeating "thr optics are so horrible"? Why should I accept that?
For one, I don't see why you need any of that evidence. Optics aren't even about truth, it's OPTICS. I'm not taking a stance on if ICE is too cruel, or if the pro/anti ICE narrative is more true I'm saying that ICE's optics as an organization are not good. As in, ICE looks bad to many Americans.
The optics suck, you can tell they suck because they're terrible. You can tell they suck because people are shooting at ICE officers. You can tell they suck because city mayor's think they'll score political points by making it hard for ICE agents to do their jobs.
You can tell the optics suck because the economist shows his approval on immigration is down to -10% now versus +10% in January. Nate Silver shows him going from ~+9% to -4% with now (just) over 50% disapproval.
This was an incredibly popular electoral issue. He crushed the election on it. Now he's underwater on it. I wonder why???
When people tell me it exists, I like taking a look.
If you get shot, does it mean your optics suck, or does it maybe say more about the person doing the shooting?
Polls generally are a lame argument, and I'm even more puzzled about why you think the names of The Economist and Nate Silver specifically should carry any weight with me.
By the way, did you just type out the same 2-3 paragraphs in 3 different comments? Are you ok?
I guess I'm just not sure how to define or quantify a fuzzy object like "optics" which by nature is opinion based, without pointing at measures of people's opinions.
Also on a real human level, they're just obviously bad? Partisanship aside can we not agree that dudes in face coverings abducting people and sending some of them to 3rd world prisons run by dictators is really fucking off-putting?
To be honest, I actually feel like you're being willfully ignorant here. When people in this thread say "Optics" they obviously mean "the public perception or appearance of an action, decision, or policy how it looks rather than what it is."
Perception is everything here, and polls measure perception/opinion.
Why are polls a lame argument?
The Economist is generally regarded as a reliable source, and Nate Silver is a very talented pollster, so it is highly likely these pills are a real indication of how the American people feel. If you have a different hypothesis as to how the American people feel, you should present it.
I'm pretty sure I'm responding to 3 different people, so I wanted to make sure they all saw the stats that back my hypothesis. Copy and pasted so it was pretty easy, but I appreciate you checking.
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